In a previous thread, I had asked about video cards for CS6, and the result was that I had pretty much decided the GTX 570 with 2.5GB VRAM was the sweet spot for me, at around $300.

But today I was just reading about the GTX 660 Ti, which is also around $300 and seems like competition for the 570.

But some things seem better on the 570, like 2.5 GB of 320-bit VRAM versus 2GB of 192-bit VRAM on the 660. Also, the EVGA GTX 570 comes with a Lifetime warranty but the GTX 660 Ti only has a 3-Year warranty. Hmm...

But other things seem better on the 660 Ti, like 1344 CUDA cores versus 480 CUDA cores on the 570. Also the 660 TI's core clock speed is 915 MHz versus the 570's 732 MHz.

But tech specs are one thing - I'm really more interested in real-world performance and bang for the buck.

Given that the two cards are both about $300, my gut says to go for the newer technology and lower power usage of the 660 Ti.

To be honest, the shaders in the GTX 570 run at double the GPU core clock speed while those in the GTX 660 Ti run at the same clock as the GPU core. The GTX 660 Ti, therefore, performs only slightly faster than the GTX 570 at best. In addition, despite the 192-bit bus width the memory bandwidth of the GTX 660 Ti is almost as high as the GTX 570's 320-bit memory.

I didn't get a lot of responses, so I decided to do a little Googling.

For those of you who come across this post later, I think I found that for almost everything, the 660 Ti is at least as good as or better than the 570, plus it uses signficantly less power and runs cooler. So for me, it's going to be the GTX 660 Ti.

But it's a little old and so it specifically addresses CS5 and prior generation CUDA cards.

Would I be safe in assuming that a) the same/similar hack is available in CS6, and b) that the new GTX 660 Ti card would be "supported" once the hack was done?

My understanding was that pretty much any card that supported CUDA would work (unofficially, of course), but I didn't know if there was something different about the current generation 600-series cards, and the 660 Ti specifically, that would be an issue. Can't imagine there would be, but this is new territory for me and I don't want to buy a $300 brick.

Ed, anytime you have a question like your CS6 and GTX 6xx series inquiry, you could look at our PPBM5 Benchmarks and see for yourself. What you do is look at our results page which is overwhelming initally with (today) 996 entries, but the first thing to do is go to the "Versions" tab and just select CS6, today you will now see 42 records of systems testing CS6. Then if you look at the "Video Card" column you will see many, many GTX 680 and GTX 670 cards among the results. The next step would be go to the "Video Card" tab and select GTX 600 series. There you have 12 people that have successfully tested a series GTX 600 card with CS6. Of course since the GTX 660 Ti is so new it just means that one is waiting for you to test and submit your results.

@Bill: Yeah, it's always good to know real-world results. I'll be ordering the 660 Ti today but it might be a while before I can post my results - we're putting together the CS6 suite + video card as a gift for my son's September b-day.

One thing I found interesting was that around the #700 mark were a couple of entries with just integrated Intel video (numbers 705 and 742). It'll be interesting to do a benchmark with just the integrated HD2000 graphics and then with the GTX 660 Ti (hopefully there will be an improvement! )

Take a look at the Test Results page of PPBM5 and if you then filter the results by selecting the "Video Card" Tab and selecting GeForce 600 series you will then have (today) have 27 records showing. Then go to the column of data called "Video Card" and click on it and you will see the top entry is a GTX 660 card. His results are not very good I guess he could use some tuning but you will see that he has an "MPE Gain" score of 15.7 which shows you it is working very good. Since the board has only been out for a few weeks it is not surprising that we have one one result so far.

Ed, it will make no diference what integrated GPU is used or what AMD/ATI GPU is used because you get the same results for "MPE off" as without the CUDA engine it is all CPU. Remember all benchmark results are typicall +/-1 or 2 seconds as the available data is a 1 second clock timer

Dier friends, I found your discussion. You talking about GTX 660 Ti model, which is not fully supported with CS6. I mean, CS6 programs is supporting Open GL of this model only. CUDA is not supported. Mabye is possible to hack it somehow. I tryed to do this, but unsuccessfull.

Be careful if when changing this model. GTX 670 is fully supported and almost same power as 660